Tim Hoey’s music training

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Prior to their formation of Cut Copy in 2001, the three original members of the Australian synth-pop outfit had never received any formal musical training. Before growing into the international recording artists they are today, frontman Dan Whitford, guitarist Tim Hoey, and drummer Mitchell Scott, took cues from some of music’s greatest talents. Proving that a record player may be the best form of instruction, Hoey shared with us five of his most influential music lessons.

Rowland S. Howard
(of the Birthday Party, the Boys Next Door) “I was attracted to how he wasn’t just playing the guitar, he was strangling the life out of it. He played a Fender Jaguar and that’s what influenced me to buy the same guitar.”

The Avalanches
“We all come from different musical backgrounds and interests. When we met each other, the Avalanches were the band we all liked. ‘Since I Left You’ is a perfect record to me. When that came out, it blew our minds and everybody else’s.”

Thurston Moore “He’s the whole reason I started playing guitar. The way he’d play live, he’d stand himself against the amp and get these crazy sounds out of it. It was a broken, dissonant sound which was at the same time so appealing.”

Giorgio Moroder
“He is like a god, so meeting him was pretty amazing — just being able to talk to him about music and his old keyboards and synthesizers.”

Early ’90s house music “Early ’90s house music that was happening in Chicago [by techno artists] Carl Craig, Larry Heard, and Marshall Jefferson
[represented] the idea of different scenes and sounds coming together that we employed on this record.”